1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to semiconductor light emitting devices including photonic crystal structures.
2. Description of Related Art
Light emitting devices such as light emitting diodes (“LEDs”) are technologically and economically advantageous solid state light sources. LEDs are capable of reliably providing light with high brightness, hence in the past decades they have come to play a critical role in numerous applications, including flat-panel displays, traffic lights, and optical communications. An LED includes a forward biased p-n junction. When driven by a current, electrons and holes are injected into the junction region, where they recombine and release their energy by emitting photons. Materials systems currently of interest in the manufacture of high-brightness light emitting devices capable of operation across the visible spectrum include Group III-V semiconductors, particularly binary, ternary, and quaternary alloys of gallium, aluminum, indium, and nitrogen, also referred to as III-nitride materials.
The quality of an LED can be characterized, for example, by its extraction efficiency, which measures the ratio of photons extracted from the device to photons generated in the light emitting region. The extraction efficiency is limited, for example, by the emitted photons suffering multiple total internal reflections at the walls of the high refractive index semiconductor crystal that forms the p-type, n-type, and light emitting regions of the device. As a result, many of the emitted photons do not escape into free space, leading to poor extraction efficiencies, typically less than 30%.
Various approaches have been proposed to enhance the extraction efficiency of LEDs. The extraction efficiency can be increased, for example, by enlarging the spatial angle in which the emitted photons can escape by developing suitable geometries, including cubic, cylindrical, pyramidal, and dome like shapes. However, none of these geometries can entirely eliminate losses from total internal reflection.
A further source of loss is the reflection caused by the refractive index mismatch between the LED and the surrounding media. While such losses could be reduced with an anti-reflection coating, complete cancellation of reflection can be achieved only at a specific photon energy and one angle of incidence.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,955,749, entitled “Light Emitting Device Utilizing a Periodic Dielectric Structure,” granted to J. Joannopoulos et al., describes an approach to the problem of enhancing the extraction efficiency. According to U.S. Pat. No. 5,955,749, a photonic crystal is created by forming a lattice of holes completely through the semiconductor layers of the light emitting diode. The lattice of holes creates a medium with a periodically modulated dielectric constant, affecting the way light propagates through the medium. The photons of the light emitting diode can be characterized by their spectrum or dispersion relation, describing the relation between the energy and the wavelength of the photons. The relationship may be plotted, yielding a photonic band diagram consisting of energy bands, or photonic bands, separated by band gaps. Though the photonic band diagram is analogous to the spectrum of electrons in crystalline lattices as expressed in an electronic band diagram, the photonic band diagram is unrelated to the electronic band diagram. When a photonic crystal is formed in an LED it affects how light propagates in the structure. Therefore if the proper lattice spacing is chosen, light that would otherwise have been trapped in the structure by total internal reflection can now escape, increasing the extraction of the LED. Also, alternative lattices can reduce the photon mode volume in the LED structure increasing the radiative rate or internal efficiency of the LED active layer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,955,749 does not teach how to form a complete, functional light emitting device, and proposes forming photonic crystal light emitting devices in GaAs-based crystals. Needed in the art are designs for III-nitride photonic crystal light emitting devices and methods of making such devices.